Country Dance Society, Boston Centre
Our History

A Brief History

The history of the Country Dance Society,
Boston Centre is primarily a history of people. Without the contributions,
vision, energy, interest, and/or money of each of these people,
the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre would not have come into
existence or continued to exist over the past eight-plus decades.
Here is an introduction to some of those important individuals:

Cecil Sharp (1859-1924)
was an English musicologist, folklorist, music teacher, frustrated
composer. In 1899 he saw Morris dancing for the first time. He
became a collector and teacher of traditional English dances and
in 1911 founded the English Folk Dance Society (EFDS) to further
the cause of restoring these traditional dances to the prominence
he felt they deserved. He directed a summer school at Stratford-on-Avon
where English traditional dances were taught and danced.

George P. Baker
was an American-born professor of Dramatic Literature at Harvard.
He went to Stratford-on-Avon in England in 1912 where he saw
Sharp's dancers. In 1913 he brought one of Sharp's EFDS dancers,
A. Claud Wright, a "very attractive man," to
America to teach these dances. Claud Wright taught classes at
Chocorua NH, Lincoln, MA, and elsewhere.

Helen Osborne Storrow
(1864-1944) was a wealthy Boston woman who was interested in music
and dance. She formed a School of Dance in Boston where women
(there is no record of men attending the classes) enjoyed various
kinds of dancing, including international folk dancing. There
was a great emphasis on physical fitness in the early part of
this century in this country, and Mrs. Storrow was interested
in international folk dancing in part because it encouraged good
posture, was healthy, and was fun.

Emma Wright Gibbs
was a friend of Helen Storrow who presided over Mrs. Storrow's
School of Dance. She knew Claud Wright, and may have been, along
with George Baker, instrumental in introducing Helen Storrow and
Claud Wright in 1913. After Mrs. Storrow discovered English dancing,
English dances replaced the international European dances at her
School of Dance.

In December of 1914, Cecil Sharp came to
the US, the first of several trips he made back and forth across
the ocean between 1914 and 1918. His primary reason for coming
in 1914 was to direct the dancing in a masque, a current production
of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (produced during the
spring of 1915). His second reason was to interest Americans
in forming a U.S. branch of the EFDS. He was asked to direct
a summer school in Eliot, Maine, where he and his dancers taught
English dancing. He also traveled to various U.S. cities to drum
up interest in an EFDS American branch.

In Boston, Cecil Sharp found already high
interest in English dancing, due to Claud Wright's visit and teaching
the previous year and to Helen Storrow's embracing of this dance
form. Claud Wright had laid a foundation for Cecil Sharp's work
in this country, as had Mary Neal and Florrie Warren
on their 1911 tour of the U.S.

On March 23, 1915 at a meeting held at the
Colony Club in NYC, the United States Branch of the English Folk
Dance Society was established. The object of the Society (from
the preamble to the U.S. Branch Constitution) was "To disseminate
a knowledge of English Folk-Dances, Singing-Games and Folk-Songs
and to encourage the practice of them in their traditional forms."
George P. Baker was elected the first president and Helen Osborne
Storrow was elected secretary. Mrs. Storrow was elected president
the following year, 1916, a position she held until her death
in 1944.

In 1915 there were four to seven EFDS centers
or branches in the US: Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago,
and possibly Cleveland, Cincinnati, Rochester, and/or St. Louis.
In most of these cities there was someone with money, usually
a woman, who was interested in supporting these new centers of
the EFDS and in getting more English dancing going. In Boston
that person was, of course, Helen Storrow, who had money, time,
energy, and a love of dancing.

In 1915, Mrs. Storrow asked Mr. Sharp to "send
us a teacher." She wanted a man teacher but because of the
war, there weren't any. In 1915 Lily Roberts, one of Sharp's
Stratford-on-Avon teachers, came to help Sharp with the masque
interludes he was arranging, to teach dancing at the Eliot, Maine
summer school, and to direct folk dancing for a pageant at Wellesley
College. Lily Roberts "came under Mrs. Storrow's wing."
She and Mrs. Storrow changed the School of Dance into a
place for teaching English country, Morris, and sword dancing;
this School of Dance was, in a way, "recycled" into
the Boston Centre in the spring of 1915.

Emma Wright Gibbs
was the first president of the Boston Centre; she was president
until 1921, when she remarried and moved west. Helen Storrow
was the second Boston Centre president. Membership of the Boston
Centre in 1915-1916 was 200 and the annual dues were two dollars.
Six parties were held with average attendance of 80. Lily
Roberts was hired to be the first paid director/head teacher
of the Boston Centre. With her marriage in 1917 to Richard
(Dick) Conant and the demands of raising a family, Lily Conant
no longer served as head teacher, though she remained very involved
with the Boston Centre.

Summer sessions of dancing were held in 1915
at Eliot, Maine and in 1916 and 1917 at the Mass. Agricultural
College (now UMass/Amherst). Teachers at the 1916 Amherst summer
session/camp ("under the personal direction of Cecil Sharp"
) were Maud Karpeles, Lily Roberts, and Nora Parkes Jervis. (There
were interpersonal tensions even then in the dance world. Maud
Karpeles and her sister were not pleased, for some reason, with
Claud Wright, so he was not invited back to the U.S. after 1914.
And Cecil Sharp had a falling out with Mary Neal even earlier.)

Louise Chapin
became interested in dancing in 1913 or 1914 on Mrs. Storrow's
lawn at the Storrow estate in Lincoln. She and Dorothy Bolles,
two adventurous young women, went to England to Cecil Sharp's
summer school, learning directly from Sharp and coming back to
teach in the Boston Centre. Louise Chapin became the head teacher
of the Boston Centre, following Lily Conant's marriage. Louise
Chapin in Boston and May Gadd in New York were the "grande
dames" of English dancing in their respective cities. Dorothy
Bolles also taught in Boston and at the Amherst summer schools..
In these early decades of the Boston Centre, the classes were
subscribed classes, some separated by gender and age; some were
more ritual, some more English country.

During the years from 1918 to about 1927,
the number of branches of the U.S. Branch of the EFDS dwindled
to two, Boston and New York. Strong, interested people in both
cities kept the dancing going. The two branches had little contact
with each other, though each retained affiliation with the Society
in England. In 1927 the Boston and New York branches merged,
cooperating to revive the Amherst summer school, which had not
been held since 1917 (though both New York and Boston had run
summer schools during the earlier years of the '20's). Several
EFDS-U.S. annual meetings were held in Amherst in the late '20's.
In 1932, Mrs. Storrow invited teachers from the Amherst summer
camp to a Girl Scout camp she had started on Long Pond in Plymouth.
The following summer she suggested that the summer dance camp
transfer from Amherst to the camp on Long Pond, which it did.
Except during one or two of the World War II years, dancing has
continued each summer since then at Pinewoods Camp.

(An interesting historical note: Mrs. Storrow
was very instrumental in the early years of Girl Scouting in this
country. She founded Our Chalet in Switzerland and started a
leadership training camp for Girl Scouts. In the early 1930's
she divided her Long Pond camp into two parts: the Girl Scout
camp (Pine Tree) and Pinewoods Camp. Boston dancers referred to
Pinewoods as "Long Pond" through much of the '40's.
Lily Conant and May Gadd from New York had a role in naming the
cabins and pavilions at the camp. Eventually Mrs. Storrow willed
Pinewoods Camp to Lily Conant. For 30 years the Conant family
ran Pinewoods Camp, until Pinewoods Camp, Inc. was formed in 1975.)

The organization which started out in 1915
as the United States Branch of the English Folk Dance Society
went through various changes of name and organizational structure
over the years. In 1928, after years of minimal ties between the
Boston and New York branches, "The Federation of American
Branches of the English Folk Dance Society" was formed to
encourage greater cooperation among the branches, which by then
also included Rochester. At a 1937 meeting, it was voted that
the New York Branch should be dissolved and that New York should
become the national headquarters of The English Folk Dance Society
of America. People in the Boston Centre agreed to this organizational
change. The name of the organization centered in New York eventually
evolved into the Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS), which
today is considered the "parent organization" of the
Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, as well as of hundreds of
other organizations. In 1940 the Boston Centre name was changed,
from The English Folk Dance Society, Boston Centre, to the Country
Dance Society, Boston Centre; this change reflected the fact
that American square dancing had been officially added to its
activities. (Boston may have used the word "Centre"
rather than "Center" to indicate that it was more than
just a center of the New York organization.)

American country dance had been part of EFDS/CDS activities for
years. As early as Cecil Sharp's time, people were aware of American
country dancing. Louise Chapin, Mary McNair, Gene Gowing,
and others encouraged American dance. During the hardships of
World War II, dance organizations which were focused primarily
on dances from other countries (like England) had to justify their
continued activity in part by including forms of American dancing.
By the end of the war, Louise Chapin was teaching square dancing.
(In the last week of her life, in 1944, Helen Storrow had attended
a square dance, as well as an English country dance party.)
At the same time, Ralph Page was teaching contras and squares
in New Hampshire and the Herman's were setting up Folk Dance House,
teaching primarily international dancing, in New York City. All
of these strands of dancing were becoming aware of each other
by the end of the '40's. Contras and squares were becoming more
"official." Louise Winston, Ted Sannella (whose
father-in-law, Irvin Davis, played an important role in CDS, Boston),
and others were central figures in the American dancing of CDS,
Boston.

Helene Cornelius started English dancing in 1951. She had
been square dancing with Ralph Page before that, and as part of
his evening dances, Ralph Page often taught a few international
dances. Liking that international exposure, Helene started dancing
other nights, including doing some Scottish. One of the nights
at Scottish, Connie Wilkes came and gave a demonstration of Morris
dancing, inspiring Helene and a friend to try a Wednesday English
dance (then held at the Charles Street Meetinghouse in Boston).
At that time Louise Chapin was teaching. There was usually a
Morris class taught first, then country dancing was taught, and
sometimes sword dancing after that. Usually about 20 people attended;
the crowd was small. After attending two Wednesday dances, Helene
and her friend were asked to be in a Christmas demonstration,
directed by Lily Conant. Eventually Helene started going to the
Boston weekend at Pinewoods, which was at that time held the last
weekend in June. She liked English country dancing. Helene with
her husband Arthur Cornelius for a time parted ways with
Louise Chapin, but eventually Louise asked Arthur to come back
and teach Morris, which he did. In 1963, Helene was asked to
start teaching the regular Wednesday dances. As no one else wanted
to do it, Helene agreed and has been teaching ever since. At
that time only one and half hours of the evening were devoted
to country dancing. However, that changed as dancers wanted more
English country and as there was less interest in the CDS Morris
classes.

The mid- to late-'70s saw a "changing of the guard"
in the Boston English dance scene, with the deaths of many of
the people who had been so instrumental in the early decades of
the Boston Centre. Lily Conant died in 1973, Dick Conant, Sr.
in 1975, Louise Chapin in 1978, and in New York, May Gadd died
in 1979. (Dorothy Bolles had died earlier, in 1935.)

Over the years there have been many, many callers, musicians,
leaders, and dancers: people instrumental in the ongoing
success of the Boston Centre. This history of facts and
people is only part of the story, for the other part of the history
lies in the flow of music, movement, laughter, and community that
are the threads that have held all this together over the years
of the Boston Centre's existence.

Written by Jean Krogh, 4/97, drawing in large part on historical
facts and perspective provided by Ed Wilfert. Many thanks to
Ed and to George Fogg, Ellen Mandigo, Helene Cornelius, and the
CDS archives, including Evelyn Lamond's multi-volume chronicle
of CDS, Boston, "Up A Double and Back."